Sounds Like Love

The opening chapters of Sounds Like Love introduce the primary characters, conflicts, stakes, and themes of first-person narrator Joni Lark’s story. In her thirties, Joni is living the life she once imagined for herself in Los Angeles, California. Despite her successes as a professional lyricist, however, Joni feels stuck. She “used to love concerts” and music but has recently felt disengaged from her favorite pastime and her vocational endeavors (6). She isn’t “sure what changed—me, or the music” (6). Her internal uncertainty conveys her ongoing search for personal fulfillment. Her circumstances may appear idyllic, but Joni’s emotional angst precludes her contentment. Without the ability to write songs, she feels out of touch with her identity and unable to express her authentic emotions.

Joni’s encounter with Sebastian Fell at the Fonda Theatre and her subsequent trip home to Vienna Shores launch her into a process of self-development, introducing The Journey Toward Healing and Self-Reclamation as a theme. When Joni meets Sebastian in person, she’s repelled by his pop star persona. However, after they kiss on stage, Joni is overwhelmed by emotion and feeling. The kiss not only acts as the romantic counterparts’ meet-cute but also reawakens Joni to the possibilities of love and intimacy. The way she describes the kiss underscores its emotional power: “A shock sizzled through me. Bright. Buzzing. A lightning strike that filled my veins with Pop Rocks. […] I hadn’t been kissed in a long time, and certainly not by someone who handled me like I was a delicacy” (16). The figurative language in this passage enacts the physiological intensity of the kiss. The diction, including “shock,” “sizzled,” “bright,” “buzzing,” and “lightning,” evokes notions of electricity and thus a magnetic connection. This moment foreshadows the role that Sebastian will play in Joni’s life. In addition, the kiss reminds Joni that she’s still capable of feeling intense emotions—a facet of herself she has lost touch with in recent months. These feelings build throughout Joni’s first hours back in Vienna Shores, too. Surrounded by familiar faces and settings, Joni begins to muse on the life she left behind and the person she has become since. Over time, she’ll have to reconcile these competing aspects of her experience to fully realize her true self.

Joni’s connection with her parents’ music venue, the Revelry, thematically conveys how Joni regards Music and Songwriting as Self-Expression. The way she emotionally responds to this setting captures how embedded the music culture has been within her identity since she was a young girl. Her internal monologue reflecting on the venue underscores its significance to her sense of self:

Perhaps that was why I loved my parents’ old music hall so much, why it felt like home when little else did, because in the darkness and the silence, I could still hear the reverberations of all the songs that came before me, and the possibility of the ones after. It made me feel not quite so alone. It reminded me […] that I was alive (48).

In recent years, Joni has established herself in the elite LA music industry. However, even this vocational success hasn’t satisfied her heart or reified her dreams. Just returning to the Rev is enough to remind Joni of who she is and why she loves music. Her historical attachment to the art form explains why she’s so personally frustrated with her writer’s block and with her parents’ decision to close the Rev. If she can’t write songs, she can’t say what she needs to say. If the Rev closes, she fears losing touch with her original artistic inspiration. Returning to Vienna Shores and the Rev thus promises to enliven dormant facets of Joni’s interiority and lead her toward personal change.

Reflecting the protagonist’s involvement in the music industry (as well as her thoughts), the novel’s chapter titles reference popular songs. The title of Chapter 2 (which describes the aftermath of the kiss and the beginning of Joni and Sasha’s telepathic conversations) refers to the Taylor Swift hit “Electric Touch.” Chapter 4 (which focuses on Joni’s close relationship with her mother) is titled after Bob Dylan’s “If Not for You.” The title of Chapter 6 (in which Joni drinks alone at the Rev, thinking about how much the place means to her) refers to “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, while Chapter 7 (which describes the morning after her bender at the Rev) takes its title from “I’ve Got Sand in My Shoes,” popularized by The Drifters. Chapter 8 (in which Joni connects with Sasha by phone) is titled after the Fleetwood Mac song “Never Going Back Again” by Lindsey Buckingham, foreshadowing that Joni and Sasha’s connection will lead her to stay in her hometown instead of returning to LA.